3‑year project • 6 Work Packages​​

The AQUEDUCT activities cover a three-year period and are structured into six interconnected workpackages. Two of these WP are fully cross-cutting: one focuses on leading and managing the project (WP0), the other (WP5) is dedicated to communication, dissemination and exploitation of the project outcomes for targeted users and audiences.

6 Work Packages
3 years Timeframe
Field → Catchment

  • WP0 – Leading the Project

    Jerôme MOLENAT & Habiba NOURI

This involves coordination activities, networking between scientific partners and communicating with the PRIMA teams, with PRIMA‑IS, with funding agencies and with institutions. It also ensures the smooth progress of the project.

The specific objectives of WP0 are:

    – to coordinate the consortium and all activities between the involved partners, across work‑packages, and between countries

    – to monitor all project activities
    – to ensure the deliverables will be provided
    – to ensure the reporting and communication required by the PRIMA office

    • WP1 – Characterising, Understanding and Quantifying Water at the Field and Stand Scalet

      Joaquim BELLEVERT & Jamel EZZAHAR

    WP1 aims at characterising, understanding and quantifying water availability and fluxes, in order to provide new water accounts and as well as to design and test innovative tools for water accounting.

    WP1 addresses the local scale, namely at the crop field scale in irrigated and rainfed agrosystem and the vegetation stand scale in natural or semi-natural ecosystems.

    • WP2 – Designing, Testing and Implementing Integrated Accounting Tools

      Frederic JACOB & Fethi LACHAAL

    WP2 aims at designing, testing and implementing integrated tools for water accounting at different scales in relation to decision levels. The integration is performed across the spatial scales, namely the landscape (integrating a diversity of fields and associated crops), the irrigation district (integrating a diversity of fields with similar water rights allocation) and the catchment (integrating a diversity of water and land uses). The integration also means coupling water biophysical models with water management models.

    By integrating biophysical and management components across these spatial scales, the modelling tools allow to simulate the interconnected water accounts. These integrated accounting tools are mostly models relying on new approaches (e.g. digital twins, system dynamics). WP2 uses water accounts tools from WP1 at local scale, both in-situ and models. These accounts are used in WP2 either as model parameters or as reference variables to calibrate and validate the integrated models. WP2 relies also on the outcomes from WP1, as some local models developed in WP2 are components of integrated models of WP2. In the project, the integrated water accounting tools developed in WP2 are used in WP3 and in WP4 to simulate water accounts and next to discuss the accounts with stakeholders.

    Prior to the design and implementation of model, a crucial activity of data collection and formatting is performed. Formatting means in particular converting data at the spatial and temporal resolutions in accordance to models’ formalisms.

    • WP3 – Innovative water accounting under water shortage scenario: evaluation with stakeholders

      Bouchra AITHSSAINE & Frederic JACOB

    The objective of the WP3 is threefold. First item is to build long-term scenario, or short-term contingency plans, in terms of land-use, farming system and water resource management, which could be considered as adaptation strategies to water scarcity for agrosystems, or the ecosystems. A co-construction approach involving the main stakeholders and scientists is favoured in the building process. Second item is to determine with stakeholders the water accounts they need related to the water status availability, demand and use. Third item is to analyse with stakeholders the added-values of the new water accounts provided by the project for the governance of water and agricultural uses and for collective decision-making processes.

    WP3 relies on simulations performed in WP4 with the integrated tools developed in WP2. The simulations will be performed based on land-use, farming system and water resource scenarios built in WP3. Consequently, there is a strong interaction between WP3 and WP4.

    • WP4 – Accounting for water in typical Mediterranean catchments

      Rim ZITOUNA & Nicola MONTALDO

    The objective of WP4 is to implement and to run integrated tools for providing water accounts under the scenarios of land use, land cover and farming system. The implementation of accounting tools for each of the agrosystems and ecosystems (WP1) and for the full integrated system (catchment) is performed, considering short to long term farming systems and land uses considered by stakeholders to cope with water scarcity and drought situations. The output of WP4 are water accounts for indicators defined by stakeholders (WP3)

    • WP5 – Disseminating

      Jérôme MOLENAT & Habiba NOURI

    The objective of WP5 is to specify and implement the dissemination and exploitation strategy and plan. The WP5 ensures that results and outcomes effectively reach and to impact the targeted users and audiences